Disclaimer - I own nothing you recognise.
Challenges listed at the bottom.
Word Count - 1506
Fic Detail - TonyPepper, Soulmate!au, Character Death, Spoilers for Endgame.
Perfect For All Their Imperfections
From the corner of her eye, she could see her string. Their string. She'd thought it would disappear when he breathed his last breath, but it didn't.
Walking over to the window, she stared silently up at the sky. The string trailed from her finger, just inside her vision, to the sky, going and going and going until it went out of her reach.
He was so far beyond her reach now.
After so many years by his side, Pepper wasn't sure who she was without him anymore. She didn't know if she even wanted to find out.
If it wasn't for Morgan… if it wasn't for their daughter, she'd have followed him at the first opportunity.
It wasn't that they'd had the most perfect relationship. They hadn't. Pepper wasn't perfect, and Tony wasn't perfect, but to her, that just made them more perfect.
Perfect for all their imperfections.
When they'd first met, she hadn't liked him. She'd wondered why fate had decided he was the one for her, when he was such a sleazeball. She'd never believed in the myth that people changed when they met their soulmate; people were as they were.
It took awhile for him to drop his guard with her. To stop being Tony Stark and start being just Tony, but the wait was worth it.
She remembered a conversation with Rhodey, way back when the two of them were first finding their way together, when he told her, "It's not easy to live in someone's shadow."
He wasn't wrong, and yet, she'd never worried about that. Being in the background was where Pepper was comfortable. She could assert herself when she needed to, but she'd never wanted the blinding flashes of paparazzi, or her name scrawled all over the biggest newspapers.
As time passed, she realised how kind Tony could be. How generous and caring he was, when he wasn't trying to play up to the persona he'd built to protect himself. Whenever she saw a story about him being cold, or damaged, or cruel, she wanted to scream at the world that they didn't know him.
Not the way she did.
She loved her Tony. The one that argued for the sake of arguing with her, just to see the way her nose wrinkled up with impatience.
"Change your shirt," she told him, checking her own reflection in the mirror.
"First of all, I look good in this shirt. Second of all, I look good in this shirt. Third of all, I look good in this shirt. Now tell me I don't look good in this shirt."
"You don't look good in that shirt," she replied dryly, mostly to see his affronted expression because truly, Tony looked good in anything. He'd smiled when she'd told him as much.
"But still, change your shirt. It clashes with my dress."
"Yes, Dear."
Memories of moments like that made her smile, even as her eyes filled with tears, because he wasn't here anymore. They wouldn't have anymore moments, good or bad.
They'd had their share of both.
Afghanistan had been the worst. Two months of knowing he was alive, but not knowing what was happening to him, had threatened to destroy Pepper.
When he came home, healing but changed, she'd stood to the side and watched him self-destruct, never knowing what to do to help him best. When she'd learned, he was dying, she'd thought her heart was going to implode in her chest.
"You make me so mad sometimes," she'd told him, later.
"I… I didn't know how to not hurt you," he admitted, stroking a hand through her hair. "I wanted to save you from as much pain as I could. I know I messed up, Pep."
"You can't do this, Tony. We're soulmates, we deal with everything, good and bad, together."
"I know," he promised. "And I'm sorry, Pep. I'm okay now, you know? I'm okay."
Tony being Iron Man, and later, Tony being an Avenger, was a lot to deal with. She understood his need to make up for Obadiah's wrongs, but it didn't mean she liked that he was putting himself in danger so often.
Watching him fly the nuke through the portal and waiting for him to come back… she'd never been so scared in her life.
It caused friction for them, but they pulled through every time. Tony being injured, Pepper being kidnapped, Tony leaving the team and then the whole Civil War.
She still hadn't forgiven Steve for that; she didn't think she ever would.
Every bit of terror, every trauma, it was all worth it.
Even the end of the world couldn't tear them apart. Tony stumbling off the spaceship, into her arms, was more than she'd could have asked for, and when he told her he was done, she followed him without complaint.
Those five years, they were the best of her life. Just her and Tony, the simple life, and then Morgan came along and she didn't think she'd ever known true happiness before. If she had, then she needed a whole new word for those five years.
Sitting on the grass, watching Tony and Morgan chasing butterflies.
Listening to Tony reading bedtime stories to Morgan, announcing, "second star to the right and straight on til morning!" which she scrambled to the window to look up at the stars.
All the energy that he'd once put into trying to protect the world, he put into being a dad, and he was fantastic at it.
For all the things that Tony had ever been; genius, playboy, philanthropist, billionaire, Iron Man, Avenger… being a dad was his greatest strength.
It was the one he enjoyed the most.
And then Steve had turned up, and she'd known. Even as Tony sent them away, she'd known that the peace they'd had, the five years of imperfect perfection, were over.
Over the years, she'd let him design, and redesign, a suit for her, in case the worst happened. She'd known now was the time to wear it. Now was the time to be Rescue, to fight for their world.
Not once did she believe they'd lose. Not once did she believe that Tony wouldn't be coming home from that fight with her.
That just made the reality that much harder to bear.
She'd carried him away from the battlefield, away to where he couldn't be damaged any further, and she'd cried. She'd screamed at him for leaving her, and she'd begged him to come back, but he'd gone too far to hear her heartbreak.
Rhodey and Happy helped her with the funeral arrangements. The other Avengers, they were around, but Pepper couldn't handle seeing them.
Steve, upon seeing Pepper carrying Morgan to bed one evening, had offered to take Morgan.
"Oh… no thanks," she'd replied, because just the thought of him near Morgan was enough to make her tremble.
She knew he wasn't to blame, could see guilt and regret weighing heavy on him, but she couldn't stop herself from being illogical this time.
She couldn't help but blame him for bringing Tony back into the fight. She'd turned away from him, and to his credit, he'd taken the hint.
"How can I even try to go on?" she'd asked Rhodey, the morning after the funeral. Morgan was still sleeping, after a night filled with nightmares and tears and cries for her Daddy to come back. "How do I do this without him?"
"You do it for him," Rhodey'd replied simply, and she knew he was right.
Tony would want her to live. He'd want her to laugh, and bring Morgan up to be the best she could be, because that's what he'd wanted for her. He'd wanted her to know happiness.
He'd wanted her to have a childhood like he never had.
She stayed, for Morgan. For Tony. And she lived. It was a quiet life, without him there to provide ridiculous commentary on the tv, or banging around in his workshop, but it was what she wanted.
Rhodey and Happy stayed close, their steady presence welcome to both Morgan and Pepper. It wasn't the same as having Tony, nothing ever would be, but it helped.
Morgan grew up missing her father but knowing he was a hero. Pepper watched on with a proud smile as her daughter graduated from university, and of every moment, she wished Tony could have been there for that one.
He'd have been so proud. He'd have cried, and then denied it, because he was an idiot sometimes.
Every night, she stood by the window in the cottage they'd lived their best years in, with her hair greying at the temples, and wrinkles beginning to form on her face, and she watched the red string from the corner of her eye. She'd believed it would disappear when he died, but it hadn't.
She knew it was there for when her time was up. It would guide her up, beyond the stars, back into the arms she belonged.
She couldn't wait.
Written for:
Assorted Appreciation - 9. Penny - Kind / "Oh... no thanks." / Reading
Disney - D2. "Second star to the right and straight on til morning."
Trope - 7. Grey hair and wrinkles.
Space - 8. Heavy
Book Club - Jebediah Holt - Carrying someone / Steady / "It's not easy to live in someone's shadow."
Shadow - 14. "How can I even try to go on?"
Attic - 6. "Change your shirt." / "First of all, I look good in this shirt. Second of all, I look good in this shirt. Third of all, I look good in this shirt. Now tell me I don't look good in this shirt."
Liza Loves - 6. Energy
Scamander's Case - 1. Terror
Basement - 2. Chasing butterflies
Film Festival - 13. Design
Galleon Club - 12. Ridiculous
Romance Awareness, Day 2 - Red String of Fate
Romance Awareness, Extra Prompt - 3. "You make me so mad sometimes."
365. 296. Trauma